Alma June 2024 Release Notes

Upcoming Issues to Note

Updated Documentation for Analytics Tables

As part of an ongoing project and in alignment with the Analytics Community of Practice, Ex Libris is currently enriching the documentation of several analytics field tables each month with additional information. This initiative aims to assist and support users in comprehending how our Alma data is presented within the realm of Analytics fields. For this month, the following tables within the Purchase Requests subject area have been updated:

Features

New Linked Open Data Dimension Added to Analytics

June 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-216022

The new Linked Open Data dimension was added to the Titles subject area of analytics. It contains the following fields that are relevant to the new BIBFRAME metadata schema:

Has Work – indicates that the bibliographic record has Work
Instance URI – the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that identifies the instance
Work MMSID – the MMS ID for the work of the instance
Work URI – the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that identifies the work of the instance

In addition, the measure field,Num of Titles (Instances) with Work, was added to the Title Measures dimension. It measures the number of titles with a related work.

For more information on the Linked Open Data dimension, see Linked Open Data.

For more information on BIBFRAME, see BIBFRAME Support.

New Preferred Contact Information Fields For Vendors

June 2024 Analytics and Insights idea exchange IdeaExchangeURM-216226

The following preferred contact information fields were added to the Vendor dimension in the Funds Expenditure, Licenses, Purchase Requests, and Usage Data (Counter) subject areas. They display the default contact information used for the account.

Preferred Address
Preferred Address Note
Preferred Email
Preferred Phone Number

In addition, the Primary Product URL field was added to these locations. It displays the URL with URL type Primary Product. If there is more than one primary product URL, only one is displayed.

For more information, see Vendor.

Additional Local Parameter Fields Now Available

June 2024 Analytics and Insights Idea Exchange NERS NERS Enhancement (ID #8169)URM-192311

An additional 20 local parameter fields were added to the Bibliographic Details dimension in all subject areas in which it appears (for a total of 30 local parameter fields). These fields allow you to use customizable fields in your reports. Note that you must contact Ex Libris Support to add these fields.

For more information, see Local Param 1-30.

Additional Enhancements

June 2024 Analytics and Insights

SF: 06666740

URM-216706

DC Format

Bibliographic Details

June 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-216245 The following tabs were added to out-of-the-box reports:
- Bibliographic Records Committed to Retain to the Titles > Title level overlap analysis dashboard
  Bibliographic Records Committed to Retain
- Physical Items Committed to Retain to the Physical Items > Physical Items dashboard
  Physical Items Committed to Retain
These tabs display information concerning records and items that the library has committed to retain in their catalog or inventory. This is useful when several libraries pool their resources together and some of the library's items need to be retained even when internal usage is low. This is reflected in Alma Analytics to help libraries manage their collaborative collections. For more information, see Rentention Information.
June 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-222088 The IdP Service in Use and Failed Authentication fields will be removed from Analytics for the September release in all locations in which they appear. These fields were removed from Alma long ago and are no longer relevant.
June 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-214572 The DC Classifications and LC Classifications values for physical items can now be taken from the bibliographical record and not just from the holdings record. To support this new feature, the existing dimensions in Physical Items subject area are now named DC Classifications - Holdings and LC Classifications - Holdings and two new dimensions were added:Dewey Classifications - Bibliographic and LC Classifications - Bibliographic that display the values from the bibliographic record.
For all other subject areas, DC Classifications and LC Classifications values are taken only from the bibliographic record.
For more information, see LC Classifications - Holdings,LC Classifications - Bibliographic,Dewey Classifications - Holdings,Dewey Classifications - Bibliographic.
June 2024 Analytics and InsightsSF: 05330510URM-104724 The following fields were added to Requests > Request Details:
- From Another Institution
- From Another Institution Circ Desk
- From Another Institution Library
These fields display the institution, library, and circulation desk from which items were requested in a fulfillment network.
June 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-218314 The Rialto folder containing out-of-the-box reports under Catalog > Shared Folders > Alma has been marked to be deprecated and will be removed in a future release. It was replaced by a Rialto product folder directly under Shared Folders.

June 2024 Analytics and Insights During the month of May, OAS (Oracle Analytics Server) was updated to the latest version (7.0) in all of our data centers.

Resolved Issues

SF number	Area	Description
07116818	Acquisitions	Changing the Vendor Name did not update the filter label. This was fixed.
07092256	Acquisitions	The Invoice API PUT operation failed to update the voucher_number field and removed the existing value. This was fixed.
07042729	Acquisitions	Performance issues related to associating and disassociating PO lines with holdings records were identified. A tracking mechanism was implemented to monitor this behavior.
07082697	Acquisitions	In the Import Profile for PO Line Information, the Interested User "Hold Item" checkbox could not be cleared. This was fixed, and the option can now be unchecked.
07029461	Acquisitions	Creating an invoice from a PO allowed invoices to be created for inactive vendors or vendors that did not support the PO owner. This was fixed. An error message is now displayed when the vendor is not valid for the invoice.
06799215	Acquisitions	In some cases, staff users received an error message when searching by title while creating an invoice from a PO. This was fixed.
07151957 07120108 07132860 07114354 07131036 07141590 07114678	Acquisitions	In some cases, the Receiving Workbench did not display all PO lines for an invoice. This was fixed.
06911464	Acquisitions	In some cases, there was slowness during the "Save and Receive" process for items on a PO line. This was fixed. The fix applies when the "Keep in Department" option is not selected.
07013594	Acquisitions	When a fund name was changed, linked PO lines were not updated with the new name. This was fixed, and changing a fund name now reindexes the linked PO lines.
06857704	Analytics and Insights	There was a discrepancy between the Usage TR_J1 field (E-Inventory > Cost Usage Measures) and the TR_J1 - Unique Item Requests field (Usage Data > Usage Data Details - Release 5). This was fixed.
06826918	Analytics and Insights	On the Analytics Object List page, when creating an object of type Report, selecting Excel as the export format, and then changing the path to a dashboard, the export format incorrectly remained Excel even though dashboards can only be exported as PDF. This was fixed, and the export format now automatically changes to PDF for dashboards.
07037882	Electronic Resource Management	The Taylor & Francis Upload Electronic Holdings job failed. This was fixed by correctly parsing the "null" string value.
06949344	Electronic Resource Management	In the Portfolio Loader, if different identifiers in separate rows of the import file matched the same portfolio in the Community Zone, the portfolio could be activated twice. This was fixed.
06959500	Electronic Resource Management	The Upload Electronic Holdings job for Springer activated portfolios with incorrect coverage information for groups. This was fixed, and portfolios are now populated with the correct coverage data.
07027479	Electronic Resource Management	Running the Update All Logical Collections job caused every collection to be reindexed, resulting in performance issues. This was fixed.
05324390 07027202	Electronic Resource Management	When searching Physical Holdings or Physical Items by Permanent Call Number and sorting by Call Number, the sort order was not satisfactory. This was fixed by introducing a new call number normalizer to provide correct sorting. Reindexing of holdings is required after setting the customer parameter "generic_call_number_filing" to "cnsort".
06664603 06921088	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	In the Pick from Shelf list, the requested material sometimes displayed an incorrect description. This was fixed.
07140820 07140655	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	When creating an item-level request through the API, sending multiple MMS IDs caused the request to become corrupted. This was fixed.
07034807 07022835 06572730	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	If the Hold Shelf Slip was enabled, scanning an item in the Return Items page to place it on the hold shelf printed both the Hold Shelf Slip and the Resource Request Slip. This was fixed, and now only the Hold Shelf Slip is printed.
06698805	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	When an AcceptItem NCIP message was received, the outgoing request was not saved with the due date. This was fixed. Note that the due date is not updated if the item has already been received by the library.
06917679	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	The Close Lost Loans job failed when the affected loans had been anonymized. This was fixed.
06935776 06724455	Fulfillment and Resource Sharing	Previously, barcodes were missing from printed documents generated through the Printouts Queue. This was fixed.
06993744 06716598	Metadata Management	The behavior of the "Statistics Note" default value was misleading. Because it appeared as the first value, it seemed to be applied to all items even when it had not been saved. This was fixed. The display now reflects the actual value saved on the item, and the default value only appears in the drop-down list when selected.
06915901	Metadata Management	In General Publishing, changing LDR/05 did not trigger republishing when the record was suppressed. This was fixed.
06761289 06657913 06775512	Metadata Management	A duplicated ampersand sign in encoded data caused issues for some customers. This was fixed by introducing the customer parameter "encode_rss_link". Set the parameter to "False" to disable encoding. The default value is "True".
07048591	Metadata Management	When viewing the contents of an itemized set, the set name was displayed in the English UI but not in other languages. This was fixed.
06967094	Metadata Management	Some Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics (Cans) characters disappeared when pasted into the Metadata Editor. This was fixed.
06942722	Metadata Management	The "Open in Repository Search" action from Browse Bibliographic Headings sometimes resulted in an empty search when the heading text contained quotation marks within a word. This was fixed.
06682907	Metadata Management	When importing a Community Zone-linked record using an import profile configured to update Community Zone records with local extensions, some cached record fields differed from the Community Zone record. This was fixed so that cached records remain identical to the Community Zone record except for local extensions.
07029994	Metadata Management	For NACSIS-CAT mappings, when TXTL was not set to 'jpn', 'chi', or 'kor', volume number information was not mapped correctly. This was fixed so that Alma now correctly maps volume information between MARC and NACSIS records.
07029994	Metadata Management	The SBN Alignment Job occasionally failed because of timeout errors. This was fixed by introducing the customer parameter "sbn_alignment_retry_wait_time". When set to a value other than 0, Alma retries the SBN request up to five times.
07028588	Metadata Management	For NACSIS-CAT mappings, when TXTL was not set to 'jpn', 'chi', or 'kor', volume number information was not mapped correctly to MARC 505$g. This was fixed and volume numbers are now mapped properly.
05309184 06050493 06958392	Metadata Management	The Data Corrector RestoreMmsCorruptedFieldFromACTL did not correctly handle multiple occurrences of field 711. This was fixed by adding support for fields with multiple occurrences.
07121683 07082889 07090923	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	The "Users Restricted for Editing" configuration was not working correctly. This was fixed.
07060570	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	The link to the Alma Status Page on the Alma login page used HTTP instead of HTTPS. This was fixed and the link now uses HTTPS.
06654450 05322319 06533384 06827070 05319240 06446587 07128580 06604525 06644802 06992306 06661962 06473503 07013117 05308745 06607546 06586791 06704004 07140782 06569319 05308702 06976577 06287140 06527416 06690909 06826866 06632724 06684289	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	Library names were not translated into Japanese in the Japanese user interface and were displayed in English. This was fixed and library names are now displayed in Japanese.
06963424	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	In the Overlap Analysis tool, content in some report rows shifted to the left. This was fixed.
07037905	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	For some jobs, notifications occasionally appeared twice. This was fixed.
06949963	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	It was not possible to add the "Contact" user type as an Interested User in the new Unified PO Line Task List. This was fixed.
07055315	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	The translation of the institution name in My Library Card was not displayed. This was fixed.
06959214	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	For some labels, the search bar occasionally displayed English instead of German. This was fixed.
07000098	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	The "Completed" Activity Status facet value for Borrowing Requests was not translated. This was fixed.
07000053 06907704 06956288	User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure	In the PO Line form, the values in the "Renewal Reason" drop-down list were displayed in English and were not translated into other languages. This was fixed.